Backlinks and ranking
on the major enginesHow to get and read the
statistics

Lots and lots of major issues with how
backlinks, an important factor in ones rank, is reported by the major engines.
Things to know about those numbers, what they mean, how accurate are they,
and how to get them in the first place.

First off, the
major engines like Google (tm) for example:

Will only show you backlinks of X ranking.
Anything less, wont show up if you put in the standard link:http://mysite.com.
This will net you a fairly small result as a matter of fact. Now if you
put in the same thing, with one slight change link:mysite.com, no http
etc etc.. the results generally expand considerably, as much as 3 to 5
times or more. Further, if I were to ask this way link:http://www.mysite.com
.. I would get yet another result.

The same is true for most of the major
engines. Recent algorithmic changes, made some sites backlinks appear to
drop nearly off the board, when in fact, most of them raised up with the
new results, if you query the engine for all the variations
of your site url, you will find them.

Now, why do this
?

One, you have no control over how other
sites, engines, blogs etc. link to your site pages. They do not all use
the same url format. So to get an accurate picture of who is really linking
to you, you need to use all the possible formats, as well as run a check
for your entire domain. This will net you results for those who have deep
linked into the site.

Ok, why ?

As noted, not everyone links to your
site the same way, so variables have to be considered. However, the main
reason is, the engines themselves are trying to avoid webmasters from knowing
the exact numbers.

You might ask yourself why would they
want to do such a thing ? The answer is a simple one, they don't want to
give out too much information to SEO's. This is accepted by most
SEO's to be a deliberate act on the part of the engines, particularity
given the fact, that as little as a year ago, you could and did get, vastly
larger numbers from the engines themselves.

Yahoo (tm) is bit more accurate, but
not entirely, so again you are playing a guessing game, unless you understand,
you have to query it through a variety of sources, in order to get accurate
information. MSN, at the moment wont even give out that information :)
and so it goes.

Ok, so how do
you find out ?

Google (tm) webmaster tools:

Sign up for an account, and you will
find all kinds of details out about your site, including a much more accurate
look at its back link situation.
On the webmaster tools, you can get
a decent look at some real time stats on who is linking to what pages.
The results you will see, will be far different than what you might see,
if you query the engine itself.

Yahoo (tm) has a similar account, and
background information provider.

Outside popularity checkers:

There are tons of these on the web,
with variable results, but query several of them, and you can get a better
idea in some cases of your backlinks, than just the results off the engines
themselves.

Ways to look,
on the engine's themselves, these can be used with or without the www extension,
and with and without the trailing /

link:mysite.com ( will give you a limited
set of backlinks, generally above a certain PR rank and ignore others )

link: mysite.com. ( notice the space
between the link: and the domain name, you may find the report can double
or more, using this tactic alone)

link:http://mysite.com ( for main backlinks
)

link:http://www.mysite.com ( for main
backlinks )

+link:http://www.mysite.com ( the +
here means it will give you all your site pages and outside links )

title:"Name of your site" ( Which may
find references where there is no active link, but your site is mentioned.
)

url: keyword ( meaning any url with
your main keyword in it )

site:mysite.com ( which gives you all
the pages of your own site the engine has indexed )

info:mysite.com ( which gives you details
the engines have about your site )

cache:mysite.com ( which will show you
the most recent cache the engine has, a good idea to see when they crawled
it last )

linkdomain:mysite.com ( all links to
that domain )

Now, not all of these will work on every
engine, as a few are engine specific, but most will work, and will provide
you with a slightly better picture of your real back link situation, than
the very first one alone will do.

Keyword ranking
VS page ranking:

This is a very specific form of rank
checking, and by and large one of the most important. Your overall
site rank, can and will flex, given the number of backlinks and other factors
that are outside of your direct control. Keyword ranking however, you have
a bit more control over, and gives you a better image of how your site
is doing.

Keywords are the backbone of the search
engines. Where you show up for your major keywords, is more important than
what your over all page ranking is. Your overall ranking in fact, is almost
irrelevant, if you place well for your major keywords.

For example: If you place first page
in the results for any or all of the major keywords that a viewer might
use to find a site of your type, then what your site ranks over all page
by page, becomes a useless number. As you could rank at 0 for your
pages, and still come up on that first page of the results, if your site
is well optimized for those words.

Everyone has seen this, and gone huh
? A site with no "rank" at all, and they are top of the chart. Most think
it means they brought their way in, not necessarily so, it is possible
to have a site page with no rank whatsoever, but that is well keyworded,
and have it place at the top of the charts for that keyword. Mind you,
if the page has good rank and good keywords, this situation is much
more likely to occur.

A word of warning
:

Some SEO companies use this fact to
"promise" you top ranking on the engines. How they do this, is pull some
uncommon word out of your text and can there by "prove" to you, that their
efforts brought you top rank. Fact of the matter is, if your site has good
density for keywords over all, and some rank, you would find that you already
placed for those words to start with. So beware of this kind of "proof".

If you do not place well for your "important"
keywords, placing well for your company name for example, is misleading.
It looks good, but in point of fact, it's meaningless, unless you are a
major player and your company name "is" a common search term. This does
not happen very often. Search terms are common words in most cases, not
company names.

This is called vanity searching. Try
it, put in your company name, and very likely, unless you have a very commonly
used name, you will come up on top of the results. The same is true if
you put in your proper name ( it's amazing how much information you can
get on just your first and last name ). However, again, unless your brand
name, or company name, is a "household" word, it's not likely to be used
as a search term, so ranking well for such words, is basically useless
for most sites.

Other tools:

Do not use the
toolbars as an accurate reference:

Many engines provide toolbars, that
are supposed to give you a sites ranking etc. Well, they are, by and large,
a sorry disappointment, in that they are seldom accurate. Statistics show,
they can be off as much as 2 to 3 ranking points, so as a ranking checker,
they entirely misleading.

Alexa ranking:

This is another one that is very misleading,
in that the rank in this case, is the number of people who use the Alexa
toolbar, who vista your site. So understand, the number you see, is a percentage
of the net population, that happens to use Alexas toolbar, it is not
an accurate number of visitors to your site over all.

There are many other tools just like
this, that can mislead you into thinking your rank or backlink situation
is worse off than it is. Track it and know what your "numbers" are, but
keep in mind, that traffic is the key, if you have the traffic of the right
viewer, then the numbers don't matter as much.

Tracking your backlinks, using any of
the above, remember, you are using a tool, a tool that gives an indication
of possible success, they are not the "be all and end all" of predictors
for the sites possible viewer base. Many many factors go into that mix,
your "rank" and backlinks, are only a few of them.